I want to discuss if people think it is possible to create an international accredited institution that could give me a graduate level degree based on my completion / creation of OER (and related published research)? Maybe the international institution is a social network with a top quality reputation. i.e. if your level of scholarship is recognized by this “institution / social network” then it is considered the same as a PhD from Athabasca University… lets call it Open Access Accreditation… Isn’t this the natural progression from connectionist (see siemens) approaches?
It would seem that an institution like UNESCO or ICDE is where this could start and with the writing coming from these institutions regarding OER they (I believe) should be addressing the issue. I’ve been reading papers from these institutions for a while and everything still assumes the OER are utilized within existing institutions and existing courses and existing programs and in the end you still have to pay for assessment and the credential. In particular, the roadmap from the OLCOS http://www.olcos.org/cms/upload/docs/olcos_roadmap.pdf seems to be a deep dive into all this, yet they still assume loads of affiliations and partnerships with existing Universities. Essentially you still have to pay to get assessed and credentialed even though you are using OER created by someone only loosely affiliated with the university granting the credential. Why?
You could assume a PhD is the equivalent of 2-3 years of full-time work, for easy math lets 5000 hours. Let’s say I am prepared to work 16 hrs a week for 46 weeks a year for seven years (5152 hours total). And during this time I create a solid amount (potentially a complete Masters degree amount) of OER (with accompanying collaborative research papers) on WikiEducator and Wikiversity. Shouldn’t I be able to take all this work and be given a PhD? Universities provide honorary doctorates; why not use this same structure to offer a PhD to someone who completes what I previously suggested? Or would the reputation I created on WikiEducator and Wikiversity by collaboratively creating a PhD effort equivalent in OER be the same as having a PhD? In fact could this not be the new PhD? And in the end I would have saved myself the 40k - 100k $ that I paid to an institution for a credential (not including 5152 hrs of lost salary). And I could do all this in a truly self directed manner without having to be “supervised” by a tenured academic. When I know that most of my supervision is going to come from the social network anyway…
Or maybe what I am asking is; what role does the graduate level university play in a Connectivist world filled with quality OER, hard work and an active social network?
With such large numbers of knowledgeable and skilled people retiring, wouldn’t it make sense to have them blog (or contribute to a wiki) every day. They would create postings about the work they do and the wisdom they have before they leave the building for their retirement. Once in a blog or wiki all this knowledge could then be indexed by the internal indexing / search engine and it wouldn’t be lost.
I was asked about Agile the other day and it got me thinking again about how to get started with Agile. This what I suggested;
Here are some starting points for Agile.http://agilemanifesto.org/
http://blog.rawsthorne.org/?p=59
http://www.extremeprogramming.org/index.htmlI’ve read a number of books on the subject and the standout for me is; “User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development” by Mike Cohn; http://books.google.ca/books?id=46ZQAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1
When you start getting deeper into Agile it would be strongly suggested that you get involved with Agile Alliance and find your local chapter. If your in Vancouver we have a strong group of people involved who spend considerable time looking at Agile from many perspectives.
As time passes my appreciation for the power of Agile increases. Even though I haven’t run an Agile project for over two years, I still manifest its principles in my current enterprise architect position. In particular, what is held within the agile manifesto. I apply this by always seeking to interact with the business users where I seek to find out what is actually working within the enterprise software “ecosystem” and what the environment could handle as technology change. It is the collaboration with the business users that makes responding to change so much “easier”. For when everyone is engaged and understands the why without the surprises of top down decision making things just go more smoothly. This article begins with the following statement and sums it all quite nicely.
According to EDS, an agile enterprise reacts quickly and transforms based on changing customer demands and market dynamics.